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It seems every other day there is contradictory information, I don't know what to believe. This is from a few days ago "High fat or 'ketogenic' diets could pre

It seems every other day there is contradictory information, I don't know what to believe. This is from a few days ago "High fat or 'ketogenic' diets could prevent, reverse heart failure" https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-10-high-fat-ketogenic-diets-reverse.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-10-high-fat-ketogenic-di...

geddy 6y ago
That study you linked was done in animals, and I have a feeling it was dug up to support the notion that keto is in any way shape or form, good for you.
- codebolt 6y ago
  Based on advice from certain experts like Rhonda Patrick and various anecdotes from others I think the combination of sugar and fat in particular exacerbates the damaging effects of both. This study seems to focus on one variable, but there may be all sorts of bias in that those who consume a lot of saturated fat also have poor nutrition otherwise and lead unhealthier lives overall.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    >I think the combination of sugar and fat That might just be that together they are particularly palatable. You would have a hard job eating a bowl of sugar or a bowl of cream but mix them together and it's much easier.
  - fsloth 6y ago
    I think it's silly to focus on single variable. I'm Over 40 and my body is showing it. I've done quite a lot of health research over the past few years. My personal metric at the moment is to lower my cholesterol and have been moderately successful without medication, so I think I'm doing something at least partially right. I think the beneficial geeky rules of thumbs for healthy living that are simple rather than perfect, are: 1. One needs in ones diet 1.1 Protein 1.2 Fiber 1.3 Carbohydrates 1.4 Fats 1.5 Vitamins 2. Prefer foods with: 2.1 Unsaturated fats like olive oil, salmon, etc 2.2 Fibers 3. Generally avoid food with: 3.1 Fast sugars 3.2 High inflammatory index 3.3 High saturated fat content 4. Don't eat more than you consume. 5. For exercise, as the bare minimum, try to walk at least 8000 steps per day or equivalent. This will statistically reduce mortality considerably. 6. Sleep enough 7. Don't stress about the above rules! Pay attention, but don't judge - yourself or others. 8. Look into other stuff that's probably good for you like stretches, breathing exercises and strength exercises. These are not hard and fast rules. But things that one can pay attention to, and through self observation perhaps make slow adjustments. So don't stop eating burgers, but pay attention to the number of calories you eat, and of what the calories are composed of. Eat what you like, but don't delude yourself. For geeks metrological devices may offer motivation. I have a bracelet that measures my steps and my sleep, and I feel it as a successful facilitation tool. But don't treat the device as a life coach, or the numbers as something that you should strive to optimize.
    - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
      4. will (literally) kill you because your metabolism slows down as you age and you have to choose between obesity and eating much, much less. Exercise helps but will only get you so far. In my 20s I would eat ~1000 calorie meals with an entire pizza, salad, rich dressing, and a big slab of chocolate fudge cake. I was never slim, but I wasn't obese either. If I tried that today I'd be breaking the scales in a few months. Having to cut down on food a lot has been one of the hardest adjustments to make. Quite a few of my friends have never managed it and they're now dangerously beyond a reasonable weight.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - moltar 6y ago
        The answer is fasting. That’s the missing feature of our modern life. Humans need to fast to clear out the glycogen stores and liver fat.
        KozmoNau7 6y ago
        I would love to see the research backing this, because that would be a quite simple lifestyle change for most people. However, it does also have an air of "this one trick will solve obesity!", which should be viewed with skepticism.
        voisin 6y ago
        There are hundreds of links on HN about fasting. You cannot lose fat without first depleting glycogen stores. You can exercise these stores away and then in the absence of further caloric input your body turns to fat stores. Or if you fast, the absence of caloric input means your body will naturally burn its glycogen stores (takes longer if you aren’t exercising, for obvious reasons).
        DougWebb 6y ago
        I think most people would disagree with your definition of "quite simple". Going from three meals a day to a 16:8 eating pattern (16 hrs fasting, 8 hrs eating window) isn't too bad. It's basically skipping breakfast. Shortening the eating window until you're eating one meal a day is tougher. Then extending the fasting period > 24 hrs is tougher still. You can't just jump into this stuff while you're carb-addicted and your body is screaming for glucose. Getting used to a keto-style diet, even if your carb intake is just low but not keto-low, helps a lot.
fsloth 6y ago
The proposals to consume a large percentage of daily intake of calories in form of fats, but avoid saturated fats, are not mutually exclusive. There are sources with high fat content but low amount of saturated fats like like salmon or olive oil. Animal fat with high saturated fat content is not the only alternative. For example, salmon or egg has 3% content saturated fats. Beef has 6%, and as ground beef with delicious fat added to make the burger patties more delicious, the content can go up to 10%. Butter has saturated fat content of 50%.
scottlocklin 6y ago
Now do France. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1768013/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1768013/ Correlational studies are inherently flawed when you have something as complex as diet. It's probably quite true that in a random sample of 80,000 health care workers in America, the people with more grease in their diets drop dead faster. It doesn't happen in France, Spain etc etc. Meaning it probably has nothing to do with saturated fatty acids, and probably much to do with whatever goes along with it. Who knows what it actually is? Soybean oil, wonder bread, dunkin doughnuts, HFCS, diet coke, being disgustingly overweight, never walking anywhere, granola, fruit juice (bleh -sugar water), dietary iron, twinkies, nacho "cheese," brined ham, trail mix, marshmallows, potato chips, microwave popcorn, soy protein -any number of things the Frogs and Spaniards don't eat or do, but fat Americans do. Using linear regression, grease/saturated fat probably correlates well with all this other garbage, and with dropping dead sooner, assuming you censor out other world populations with different national diet tendencies. Of course including Spaniards in the data set, you get a different answer.
- fsloth 6y ago
  The moderate consumption red wine seems to be a plausible component of the low number of realized CHD deaths?
  - scottlocklin 6y ago
    It's a nice story, but it's about as likely as brie causing fewer realized CHD deaths. There's no way you could deconvolute either from their diet; the red wine meme is probably just upper middle class people telling each other their vices are healthy. The "French paradox" isn't the only one indicating the statistics are horse shit on saturated fat: consider the Israeli paradox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_paradox
    - boringg 6y ago
      Yeah the red wine health benefits were denied recently when the underlying study failed to take account for other variables such as social class and lifestyles. Amazing how flawed some of the old studies are. Wouldn’t be surprised if somehow the alcohol lobby was involved back then

geddy 6y ago

That study you linked was done in animals, and I have a feeling it was dug up to support the notion that keto is in any way shape or form, good for you.

codebolt 6y ago
Based on advice from certain experts like Rhonda Patrick and various anecdotes from others I think the combination of sugar and fat in particular exacerbates the damaging effects of both. This study seems to focus on one variable, but there may be all sorts of bias in that those who consume a lot of saturated fat also have poor nutrition otherwise and lead unhealthier lives overall.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  >I think the combination of sugar and fat That might just be that together they are particularly palatable. You would have a hard job eating a bowl of sugar or a bowl of cream but mix them together and it's much easier.
- fsloth 6y ago
  I think it's silly to focus on single variable. I'm Over 40 and my body is showing it. I've done quite a lot of health research over the past few years. My personal metric at the moment is to lower my cholesterol and have been moderately successful without medication, so I think I'm doing something at least partially right. I think the beneficial geeky rules of thumbs for healthy living that are simple rather than perfect, are: 1. One needs in ones diet 1.1 Protein 1.2 Fiber 1.3 Carbohydrates 1.4 Fats 1.5 Vitamins 2. Prefer foods with: 2.1 Unsaturated fats like olive oil, salmon, etc 2.2 Fibers 3. Generally avoid food with: 3.1 Fast sugars 3.2 High inflammatory index 3.3 High saturated fat content 4. Don't eat more than you consume. 5. For exercise, as the bare minimum, try to walk at least 8000 steps per day or equivalent. This will statistically reduce mortality considerably. 6. Sleep enough 7. Don't stress about the above rules! Pay attention, but don't judge - yourself or others. 8. Look into other stuff that's probably good for you like stretches, breathing exercises and strength exercises. These are not hard and fast rules. But things that one can pay attention to, and through self observation perhaps make slow adjustments. So don't stop eating burgers, but pay attention to the number of calories you eat, and of what the calories are composed of. Eat what you like, but don't delude yourself. For geeks metrological devices may offer motivation. I have a bracelet that measures my steps and my sleep, and I feel it as a successful facilitation tool. But don't treat the device as a life coach, or the numbers as something that you should strive to optimize.
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    4. will (literally) kill you because your metabolism slows down as you age and you have to choose between obesity and eating much, much less. Exercise helps but will only get you so far. In my 20s I would eat ~1000 calorie meals with an entire pizza, salad, rich dressing, and a big slab of chocolate fudge cake. I was never slim, but I wasn't obese either. If I tried that today I'd be breaking the scales in a few months. Having to cut down on food a lot has been one of the hardest adjustments to make. Quite a few of my friends have never managed it and they're now dangerously beyond a reasonable weight.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - moltar 6y ago
      The answer is fasting. That’s the missing feature of our modern life. Humans need to fast to clear out the glycogen stores and liver fat.
      - KozmoNau7 6y ago
        I would love to see the research backing this, because that would be a quite simple lifestyle change for most people. However, it does also have an air of "this one trick will solve obesity!", which should be viewed with skepticism.
        voisin 6y ago
        There are hundreds of links on HN about fasting. You cannot lose fat without first depleting glycogen stores. You can exercise these stores away and then in the absence of further caloric input your body turns to fat stores. Or if you fast, the absence of caloric input means your body will naturally burn its glycogen stores (takes longer if you aren’t exercising, for obvious reasons).
        DougWebb 6y ago
        I think most people would disagree with your definition of "quite simple". Going from three meals a day to a 16:8 eating pattern (16 hrs fasting, 8 hrs eating window) isn't too bad. It's basically skipping breakfast. Shortening the eating window until you're eating one meal a day is tougher. Then extending the fasting period > 24 hrs is tougher still. You can't just jump into this stuff while you're carb-addicted and your body is screaming for glucose. Getting used to a keto-style diet, even if your carb intake is just low but not keto-low, helps a lot.

fsloth 6y ago

The proposals to consume a large percentage of daily intake of calories in form of fats, but avoid saturated fats, are not mutually exclusive. There are sources with high fat content but low amount of saturated fats like like salmon or olive oil. Animal fat with high saturated fat content is not the only alternative. For example, salmon or egg has 3% content saturated fats. Beef has 6%, and as ground beef with delicious fat added to make the burger patties more delicious, the content can go up to 10%. Butter has saturated fat content of 50%.

scottlocklin 6y ago

Now do France. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1768013/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1768013/ Correlational studies are inherently flawed when you have something as complex as diet. It's probably quite true that in a random sample of 80,000 health care workers in America, the people with more grease in their diets drop dead faster. It doesn't happen in France, Spain etc etc. Meaning it probably has nothing to do with saturated fatty acids, and probably much to do with whatever goes along with it. Who knows what it actually is? Soybean oil, wonder bread, dunkin doughnuts, HFCS, diet coke, being disgustingly overweight, never walking anywhere, granola, fruit juice (bleh -sugar water), dietary iron, twinkies, nacho "cheese," brined ham, trail mix, marshmallows, potato chips, microwave popcorn, soy protein -any number of things the Frogs and Spaniards don't eat or do, but fat Americans do. Using linear regression, grease/saturated fat probably correlates well with all this other garbage, and with dropping dead sooner, assuming you censor out other world populations with different national diet tendencies. Of course including Spaniards in the data set, you get a different answer.

fsloth 6y ago
The moderate consumption red wine seems to be a plausible component of the low number of realized CHD deaths?
- scottlocklin 6y ago
  It's a nice story, but it's about as likely as brie causing fewer realized CHD deaths. There's no way you could deconvolute either from their diet; the red wine meme is probably just upper middle class people telling each other their vices are healthy. The "French paradox" isn't the only one indicating the statistics are horse shit on saturated fat: consider the Israeli paradox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_paradox
  - boringg 6y ago
    Yeah the red wine health benefits were denied recently when the underlying study failed to take account for other variables such as social class and lifestyles. Amazing how flawed some of the old studies are. Wouldn’t be surprised if somehow the alcohol lobby was involved back then